APOLOGY.

How you, O Athenians, have been affected by my accusers, I cannot tell; but
I know that they almost made me forget who I was--so persuasively did they
speak; and yet they have hardly uttered a word of truth. But of the many
falsehoods told by them, there was one which quite amazed me;--I mean when
they said that you should be upon your guard and not allow yourselves to be
deceived by the force of my eloquence. To say this, when they were certain
to be detected as soon as I opened my lips and proved myself to be anything
but a great speaker, did indeed appear to me most shameless--unless by the
force of eloquence they mean the force of truth; for is such is their
meaning, I admit that I am eloquent. But in how different a way from
theirs! Well, as I was saying, they have scarcely spoken the truth at all;
but from me you shall hear the whole truth: not, however, delivered after
their manner in a set oration duly ornamented with words and phrases. No,
by heaven! but I shall use the words and arguments which occur to me at the
moment; for I am confident in the justice of my cause (Or, I am certain
that I am right in taking this course.): at my time of life I ought not to
be appearing before you, O men of Athens, in the character of a juvenile
orator--let no one expect it of me. And I must beg of you to grant me a
favour:--If I defend myself in my accustomed manner, and you hear me using
the words which I have been in the habit of using in the agora, at the
tables of the money-changers, or anywhere else, I would ask you not to be
surprised, and not to interrupt me on this account. For I am more than
seventy years of age, and appearing now for the first time in a court of
law, I am quite a stranger to the language of the place; and therefore I
would have you regard me as if I were really a stranger, whom you would
excuse if he spoke in his native tongue, and after the fashion of his
country:--Am I making an unfair request of you? Never mind the manner,
which may or may not be good; but think only of the truth of my words, and
give heed to that: let the speaker speak truly and the judge decide
justly.

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And first, I have to reply to the older charges and to my first accusers,
and then I will go on to the later ones. For of old I have had many
accusers, who have accused me falsely to you during many years; and I am
more afraid of them than of Anytus and his associates, who are dangerous,
too, in their own way. But far more dangerous are the others, who began
when you were children, and took possession of your minds with their
falsehoods, telling of one Socrates, a wise man, who speculated about the
heaven above, and searched into the earth beneath, and made the worse
appear the better cause. The disseminators of this tale are the accusers
whom I dread; for their hearers are apt to fancy that such enquirers do not
believe in the existence of the gods. And they are many, and their charges
against me are of ancient date, and they were made by them in the days when
you were more impressible than you are now--in childhood, or it may have
been in youth--and the cause when heard went by default, for there was none
to answer. And hardest of all, I do not know and cannot tell the names of
my accusers; unless in the chance case of a Comic poet. All who from envy
and malice have persuaded you--some of them having first convinced
themselves--all this class of men are most difficult to deal with; for I
cannot have them up here, and cross-examine them, and therefore I must
simply fight with shadows in my own defence, and argue when there is no one
who answers. I will ask you then to assume with me, as I was saying, that
my opponents are of two kinds; one recent, the other ancient: and I hope
that you will see the propriety of my answering the latter first, for these
accusations you heard long before the others, and much oftener.